Mr. Roques - Yes, companies need people monitoring social media 24/7. And the evening/weekend teams had better not be interns and entry-level, because the crises that blow up after hours are likely to be the worst.
Large companies that work with public relations firms are usually (or should be) prepared to deal with bad situations. When I studied at journo school, one class on PR was taught by a PR expert in emergency public relations at large firms; she had her own business that specialized in this area. Granted, nowadays it's an even bigger challenge, due to social media, phones with video, etc. -- but it's also more of a need for companies that can afford to have these pros on speed-dial. Smaller businesses should also figure out at least a generic plan; they should know who to call, which execs can publicly speak to the issue (be it on camera; on FB/Twitter/YouTube/LinkedIn or the traditional media, etc.), and at what point issues should escalate up the chain.
Well, but sometimes issues can't wait until monday at 10 PM. With those urgent cases, how are companies supposed to handle it? There's the technical side of it that handles whatever issues they were having but an equally-important subject would be how to handle the public relations of those issues.
Found this June 2012 study/whitepaper by IBM - http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/rlw03009usen/RLW03009USEN.PDF - which, among many things, found that C-level execs are often credited or blamed for a company's reputation. Lots of good stuff in this study. Appears they do this annually, so I look forward to the 2013 report.
I think that's one shift we're also seeing: In addition to employees' growing use of social media, we're also seeing many employees accessing email, social media, and other work tools during non-traditional business hours. I don't know any statistics; this is anecdotal, but I know few professionals who close their computers at 5 on Friday and don't log back on until 9 on Monday... not saying whether that's right or wrong, but it seems rarer with each year! However, depending on the reason a company has to respond at 8 pm on Saturday, execs should coordinate their public comments. We've seen businesses roiled in the press and social media for lame, weak apologies or badly phrased explanations.
It first requires that businesses go through a change in mentality, forgetting about the closed-environment years and start letting their customers know more details, in a way, letting them know they are part of it themselves.
Are those community managers hired for 24/7 jobs? How do they handle issues at 8pm on a saturday?
I've seen these things go horribly wrong when an individual takes it on his or herself to respond for the business, without really knowing what they're doing. Planning means having informed people inside the business guide the response -- or, I'm afraid, hiring outside help.
People who think they can deal with these crises just because they know how to tweet are often deluding themselves.
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I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
The smartphone market reached a significant milestone, a breakthrough that may cause vendors to celebrate but could strain the capabilities of IT service desks.
In the fall of 2011, around 160,000 students in 190 countries enrolled in a Stanford-sponsored online course about artificial intelligence. About 23,000 completed the course and got certificates, including 248 who got a perfect score. The university offered the same course the old-fashioned way to students sitting in Stanford classrooms. None of the those students got a perfect score.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
